


Protect what you love

by seektheinfinite



Series: Family is everything [3]
Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Family Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 09:54:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8484883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seektheinfinite/pseuds/seektheinfinite
Summary: Aaron was closing the gap in seconds, wrapping his arms around his fiancé in a fierce embrace. “Hey, look at me. You are not losing your mind, okay? You’re just stressed and you’ve been working too hard. That’s all.” 
 Aaron worries about Robert after the crash.





	

 

“I just don’t know what to do. I’ve tried talking to him but he won’t listen. He’s running himself ragged trying to do everything. He’s going to make himself ill.”

Liv stopped in the hallway, hand poised over the handle on the door. She needed to get into the backroom, her school bag was in there and she was running late as usual. There was something in the tone of Aaron’s voice that made her pause. She didn’t know who he was talking to but she was pretty sure she knew who he was talking about.

“Oh love, I know you’re worried about him, but you know what he’s like. He just wanted to make sure everything was perfect for when you came home.” Chas replied.

There was a pause and Liv wondered if perhaps the conversation was over and it was safe to go , when Aaron continued.

“I’ve been home for three days now and nothing has changed. He’s still up when I go to bed, and he’s gone when I get up in the morning. I know he’s not eating properly. I saw what happened to you after Cameron and I’m worried the same thing is going to happen to Robert if he doesn’t start taking care of himself.”

“That’s not going to happen. You know Robert isn’t good at dealing with his feelings, he just needs some time that’s all. We need to be there for him and try to look after him as best we can. I’m sure he’ll open up when he’s ready.”

Liv heard a chair scrape across the floor before the clatter of dishes being placed in the sink.

“I know, but after everything we’ve been through I wish he would just talk to me.”

“You’re both as bad as each other there. Neither one of you is exactly a Chatty Kathy.”

“Chatty Kathy?” Liv could hear the disdain in Aaron’s voice. There was no reply from Chas but she could picture her wearing her ‘yep that’s what I said’ face.

Her internal debate over whether it was safe to enter was cut short with a quick glance at her watch that told her she had all of 5 minutes to get her bag and reach the bus stop.

“Hiya.” She forced an air of cheery nonchalance into her voice as she made her way into the backroom.

“Morning love.” Chas was sat at the table nursing a cup of what Liv assumed was coffee; she had learnt very early on living in the pub that Chas was practically non-functioning first thing in the morning without a cup of coffee.

“Hey. Shouldn’t you be on your way to school already?” Aaron glanced towards the clock on the wall.

“Yeah, I know. I’m just getting my bag and then I’m on my way. See yah later.”

 

~~~

 

“Damn it.” Robert cursed himself for not actually putting his clothes in the wash basket the night before when he got himself tangled up in yesterday’s trousers, bashing his knee against the side of the bed.

“Robert?” Aaron’s weary voice cut through the darkness as he shuffled on the bed beside him.

Robert sighed, untangling himself from his errant trousers. “Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you. Go back to sleep.”

“It’s still dark.” The confusion was evident in Aaron’s voice. There was yet more shuffling, before he added, “It’s only 7 o’clock.”

“Only! Aaron, I’m already an hour late. I set the alarm for 6, it didn’t go off. I’ve got too much to do at the scrapyard, I don’t have time for this today.” Robert was temporarily blinded as Aaron flicked on the bedside light. “A little warning would be nice next time.”

“Sorry.” Aaron leaned across to Robert’s side of the bed where he had sat down to put on his boots. He grabbed his arm, turning him around to face him. “I’m sure there’s nothing that can’t wait for another hour or two.”

Robert tried to ignore the look on Aaron’s face that said he had more in mind than just spending another hour sleeping, and pulled his arm free of Aaron’s grip. He grabbed his phone from the bedside table.

“I really don’t have time Aaron. Besides, you’re still healing.” He made his way to the bedroom door, turning back to face him. “Get some more sleep, I’ll see you later okay?”

“Yeah.” Aaron replied, unable to keep the disappointment at Robert’s actions out of his voice.

 

~~~

 

“Have you seen my keys?” Robert stomped around the backroom of the pub pulling the cushions from the sofa before haphazardly throwing them back down. Not finding what he was after, he moved on to the coffee table, magazines tossed to one side, the search becoming more frantic.

“When did you have them last?” Aaron placed his spoon back down into the cereal bowl before making his way into the kitchen to help with the search.

“Well if I knew that, I wouldn’t be looking for them, would I?” Robert snapped, now pulling all the fruit from the fruit bowl on the side. It was an unlikely place but then he’d looked in all the obvious places already.

He just didn’t understand why he couldn’t find them. He had a place for his keys, in the bowl on the side of the counter in the kitchen. It was a habit he’d always had wherever he’d lived. It was the first thing he did when he got in; the keys went in the bowl, and he was certain that he did just that last night. So why they were not there now was a mystery.

“Okay, you don’t need to stress.” Aaron continued the ever-frantic search in the kitchen. He didn’t want to say anything because it seemed that Robert’s nerves were getting more and more frayed by the day but in all honesty, he was worried about his fiancé. Robert was meticulous about his keys, phone and wallet, and never in all the time he’d known him had he ever misplaced them.

Robert seemed to deflate a little at the tone in Aaron’s voice. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t take it out on you. I’m just tired that’s all.” Robert abandoned his search for the keys to comfort Aaron. He knew that if he didn’t offer him some kind of reassurance that he was okay there was going to be a talk later, and to be honest he was really not in the mood for it. “Maybe I left them at the scrapyard or something.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Aaron wanted to say that he found it unlikely but now was not the time so he let it go.

Instead he pulled Robert in for a kiss, fingers finding the back of his neck before their lips were locked.

“Get a room will you. I’ve just had breakfast and you’re making me feel sick.” They were startled out of their embrace by Liv.

“Yeah well, your face is making me feel sick.” Aaron retorted, before giving her a smirk. He turned back to Robert, giving him one last peck before reluctantly letting go.

“Right I better get off. You,” Robert gestured towards Liv, “get to school. You” he turned back towards Aaron, “don’t be doing anything stupid while I’m gone. Remember you’re still healing.”

“Yes mum” Aaron not so subtly rolled his eyes as Robert headed off to the scrapyard, all thought of the keys forgotten.

 

~~~

 

Robert was putting his phone on charge in the bedroom when he noticed his keys sitting on the side.

“Thanks for finding my keys. Could have put them in the bowl though?” He quipped to Aaron as he entered the bedroom behind him.

Aaron frowned. “Wasn’t me.”

“Oh well, I must have left them here yesterday then. No idea why I would have left them there, or why I didn’t see them this morning.”

“Well, you were a bit distracted this morning.” Aaron wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

“Yeah, well seeing your ugly mug in the morning is enough to throw anyone off.” Robert was all smiles and Aaron was struck by the fact that this was the first time he’d seen him genuinely smile in a long time. Maybe they were finally beginning to put this whole mess behind them.

 

~~~

 

“Aaron, wake up.” He was shaken awake by a fraught Robert who was now bounding out of the bed. He threw the light on before kneeling down on the floor underneath the bed.

“What the hell are you doing?” Aaron couldn’t help the irritation in his voice and in all honesty right now he didn’t really care. This was the third time this week that Robert had woken him up at arse o’clock in the morning because of some crisis or another.

“I’m late. Again. This time my phone’s disappeared. I know I had it when I came to bed because I set the alarm, but now it’s gone. I thought maybe you’d moved it or something.” Robert was peering at him from his spot on the floor.

Aaron swiped a hand over his face, before scrubbing at his eyes, trying to wake himself up. It was too early for this, and he had no idea what Robert was going on about. “Why would I move your phone?”

“Well…” When it was put to him like that, he realised that it didn’t make sense. He felt bad for having woken Aaron now, after all he was still healing and needed all the rest he could get, but he should say something because Aaron was still looking at him, obviously waiting for an answer. “I don’t know. Sorry, not awake yet. I’ll just….” Robert gestured towards the bedroom door, “maybe it’s downstairs or something.”

Before Aaron could say anything else, Robert was out of the door and half way down the stairs, leaving him lying there unsure of what to do. If he was worried before, events of the past week had done nothing to assuage his worry for his fiancé. This muddled, unorganised person who kept losing everything was not the Robert he knew.

After waiting for a few minutes to give Robert some time, Aaron decided that the only course of action was to go downstairs and catch Robert before he headed off to the scrapyard. They hadn’t really had much time to talk since the accident, between Aaron being in the hospital, the scrapyard, Liv, Chas and a whole host of seemingly endless well-wishers. When they did talk it was always focused on him. Robert said very little about how he was dealing with it all, or not as the case may be.

When he got downstairs, he found Robert sat in semi-darkness, the overhead lights were off, but he’d turned on the little side lamp beside the sofa. Aaron could see that he was holding his phone in his hand, turning it over and over, whilst staring off into the distance.

“Robert.” He jumped a little at his name, but turned to face Aaron with a sad smile on his lips that broke Aaron’s heart a little.

“I found it.” He said it so small that if Aaron wasn’t paying attention, he wouldn’t have heard it. “Right here on the coffee table, but I swear I took it up with me last night. God, Aaron, I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

Aaron was closing the gap in seconds, wrapping his arms around his fiancé in a fierce embrace. “Hey, look at me. You are not losing your mind, okay? You’re just stressed and you’ve been working too hard. That’s all.”

He tried to put as much conviction into his voice as he could, but judging from the look on Robert’s face, he hadn’t succeeded in convincing him that he believed what he was saying. “You’re a terrible liar, you know.”

Aaron sighed, “Yeah, that was always your department.” He meant it as a joke, but he could tell that it had fallen flat when Robert sagged into himself a little more. “Hey, you know I’m only joking, right?”

Robert didn’t respond, instead going back to staring blankly at his phone.

“Okay, truth is, I am worried about you. You’ve not been yourself since the accident. You’ve been so focused on me that you’ve been neglecting yourself. I think maybe you should take a few days off from the scrapyard and just, you know, we can hang out or whatever. Maybe we can do something with Liv.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right. I have been putting in a lot of hours and I haven’t been sleeping that great. I might just head back up to bed.” Robert placed the phone back down on the coffee table before making his way back upstairs.

 

~~~

 

“Robert gone to work already?” Chas questioned as she entered the backroom to find just Liv and Aaron at the breakfast table.

“No, I sent him back to bed. He’s gonna take a few days off work.” Aaron looked up from the newspaper he was reading to give Chas a pointed look, as though to say ‘we’ll talk about this later when Liv had gone to school’. He didn’t want to have to worry her any more than she already had been with the whole car crash business.

“Finally.” Liv cut in around a mouthful of toast. It took a few seconds to register what she had said as both Aaron and Chas give her questioning looks.

“What do you mean, ‘finally’?” Aaron was the one to break the silence, leaning forward across the table.

“Well,” she swallowed, “I heard you and Chas talking the other day about how you were worried about him and how he was working so hard. So I’ve been trying to get him to take some time off by turning his alarm off and hiding his keys.” She had the decency to look sheepish as both Chas and Aaron’s eyes bore into hers.

“You did what? Liv, Robert thinks he’s going mad. I thought he was losing it. Why would you do that?”

Liv’s face flushed. She hated when Aaron was mad at her. “I was trying to help. You were worried and Chas was worried and you were saying how stubborn he is and how he won’t listen to anyone. I just thought if I could at least get him to slow down a bit, get some more sleep it would help him, and you.”

Aaron swiped a hand across his face, trying to work out what to say to her. This whole week, and it had been Liv all along. Before he could say anything, he was interrupted by Chas.

“It’s okay love.” She placed a hand lovingly on Liv’s shoulder. “I know you were just trying to help, and it’s okay. Just next time perhaps talk to someone first before you go having these bright ideas.”

“I need to go talk to Robert.” Aaron was on his feet, striding towards the door. He couldn’t look at Liv right now, he knew she’d only been trying to help but weeks of frustration and worry for Robert’s mental state were rushing out and he didn’t want to end up doing something he would regret later.

Before he got to the door, he heard Liv say, “I’ll go talk to him. This is my fault, I should at least explain why I did it.”

Aaron was about to argue, to tell her that she’d created enough mess already, but he was cut short by Chas. “I think that’s a great idea love. Aaron and I will wait here, just shout if you need us.”

Liv practically ran past Aaron on her way to the stairs, obviously worried that he might try and stop her on her way out.

“Just leave them too it, love. I know you’ve been worried about him, but so has Liv obviously. Let her talk to him first.” Chas took hold of Aaron’s arm, guiding him back to the breakfast table. She knew that if she didn’t, he would be following Liv up the stairs in a heartbeat.

 

~~~

 

Robert was sitting on the edge of the bed when she pushed the door open. She’d tried knocking a couple of times but having had no reply, she decided to just risk seeing something she’d rather not, or she would be standing there all day.

“Hey.” When there was no reply from Robert, Liv made her way into the bedroom, before sitting next to him. “Robert, I have something to tell you and it’s okay if you get mad at me. Aaron is, but I just need you to know that I was trying to help and I didn’t mean for you to get hurt. I’m sorry.”

She was crying now, and she felt so stupid.

“Hey,” Robert seemed to snap out of himself as she leaned onto his shoulder, tears flowing freely down his shirt. “Liv, I have no idea what you’re talking about. So just slow down, and start from the beginning. I can’t promise not to get mad, because I have no idea what’s going on, but you know out of the two of us, I am more level headed than Aaron.”

He patted her leg awkwardly, wanting to offer comfort for whatever was bothering her, but not really sure how to do it. He was still getting used to this whole parental figure thing they had going on.

Liv took a deep breath before looking him in the eye. “I heard Aaron and Chas talking the other day about how they were worried about you, that you weren’t taking care of yourself. They were right, you’ve been so focused on Aaron since the accident. They were saying how stubborn you are, and that you wouldn’t listen to anyone if they told you to take it easy.”

Robert was frowning at her now, not sure where this was going. He wanted to ask questions, but he could tell from the expression on Liv’s face that she was struggling with this and he didn’t want to interrupt her.

“Anyway, I knew that you wouldn’t take any time off from the scrapyard so I kind of turned your alarm off on your phone, and hid your keys, and a few other things. I just wanted you to get some more sleep, and I didn’t like the idea of you driving. I was worried about you too.”

Liv could see Robert’s expression turn from one of confusion to one of understanding. “That’s why my phone was downstairs this morning. You do realise that Aaron was convinced that I was going mad? I was starting to believe it myself.”

Liv blushed, before looking down at her hands. “I know now. I’m so sorry, I just wanted to do something to help and I didn’t know what else I could do.”

“Oh, Liv, come here.” He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. “You’re my family now too you know. I don’t want you to ever worry about me or Aaron or anything. So in future, if there is anything, and I mean anything bothering you, promise you’ll talk to me? I can’t promise to know all the answers, or how to fix things, but I can certainly try. Okay?”

Liv looked at him sheepishly. “Okay, I’ll try.”

“Now, seeing as I have the day off, why don’t we go out somewhere; you, me and Aaron?”

“What about school?”

“One day off won’t hurt. I’m sure between us we can work on Aaron and get him to agree.” Liv smiled before hugging him again.

“Thanks Robert.”

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is not what I originally started out writing but this is where the characters took me. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. 
> 
> Join me on tumblr @beyondthebridge


End file.
